Archive for August 2003

Found myself quite challenged by the gig at the Fridge Bar yesterday. Drove down there with The Man From Uranus in the sick, sick heat, and we almost died a couple of times when Uranus was telling me how he spent a Â£1000 on Stockhausen and I was doing dog impressions and he swerved into the path of another vehicle and I was thinking how ironic it would be if we died on EARTH. When we got to London we hooked up with his artist friend Mark who gave me a rancid watermelon and who wanted to take us to a BBQ that a “philanthropist” was holding, and since Mark knows Tracey Emin and all them lot I started rehearsing my side of a potential conversation in my head, but when we got there it was just a bloke called Stuart and a bowl full of chopped peppers. He asked us if it was beer-o’clock and we figured it was so I was drinking Stella in London and it was just like Cambridge, only a lot more awkward. It was more awkward too because Stuart offered us a promo CD of this Dutch lady popstar called Anouk (because he’s in The Biz and he had about 20 copies) and just by freaky chance I had it already because some very old Dutch friends of my parents from Africa bought it for me as an unwanted gift and I so had to say “No, I have it already.” Then we went to The Fridge Bar and met the sound guy who looked like his hands might stop shaking if he had enough drinks and it must have been about near the boiling point of air down in that cellar. Simon and Simon pitched up with the especially uncomissioned but therefore particularly gratefully received UM FILM OF RANDOM IMAGES and also the MAN FROM URANUS FILM OF RANDOM IMAGES but without the video lead that would be crucial for the showing of the aforementioned films. It was about 7:30PM and Simon broke down in wet sobs but Simon grabbed him and they reappeared about fifteen minutes later with the news that the lead or one like it was being cabbed over. They looked happy but sweaty and I was relieved an’ all. Happy Hour was from 6-9PM and after a while I found I couldn’t really concentrate on anything, and I could feel my facial features beginning to attempt to slide off my face, but I was still kind of nervous inside because of all the rushing around and not-meeting-Tracy Emin and so on. When I came to play I was just nowhere near the zone and there was a lot of chat and I started to get into that confrontational vibe and I fluffed the gig, even though a black girl came up to me afterwards and said ” I like your image, because I think image is important.” “Thankyou”, I said. Maybe it was my Venom shirt.

I feared for the MFU but he had one of the best gigs I’d seen him do and he seemed like a relaxed and talented motherfucker, and I videoed him doing it. He videoed me but all he got was Betty Page’s ass from Simon’s film, and I red glow where I should have been. The crowd dug him. Maybe they believed he was from Uranus. London people are snobs, I reckon.

Before we hit the motorway again we went back to the BBQ and everyone was lying around drinking wine and being rich and I was carrying a Samsonite briefcase with UM stencilled in fluorescent orange on the side, and we hadn’t eaten for a long time (the MFU hadn’t eaten all day!) so we got some wraps and pushed everything that was still left on the table inside and ate it really fucking fast with our fingers. Mark was smoking something that got you into a psychosis after one puff and talking to a really enormous gentleman called Timmy and a person who was desperately drunk in that way that some posh women can do uniquely, and she was asking Mark how much Stuart gave him for his paintings so we left. When we got to the car I suddenly realized I’d better have a piss and so I went into a bathroom that stank of money somehow, because it was so lovely and elegant and spacious and they hadn’t even done it up yet. We thanked Mark again in the hallway and then when we got outside I saw that the MFU had left my briefcase with the fluorescent orange UM standing upright and visible on the busy London pavement in Brixton. I’ll be really happy for him when his pop career takes off so he can buy new parts for his spaceship and GET HOME.

On this day in the history of Our Lord my supercool wasp-coloured Nikes that the dole gave me for getting a job are soaking in my artist-style (dirty) sink, but why exactly? You would have thought that by the time a man gets to thirty-three years of age he would cease to find the fun in trying to get into the Folk Festival for free via some humiliation and lots of mud. Especially when he isn’t really a folk music type, or not that folk music anyway. We did want to see Julian Cope, and we could hear “Upwards at 45 Degrees” while we were still trying to work out how to get into the chalk pits, or Romsey Beach as it is known round here, but it was still light at that point, and we were still sober. After about five cans of Stella it got dark, I got muddy feet, I hurt my knee, I got some thorns in my fingers, and I got escorted off the site by security twice. Finally we got in, me by rolling under a fence next to some policepersons, and everybody else by walking in through the main gate. Mission accomplished, we went to main stage whereupon I had a whitey and we watched a deeply uncool band. Even the folky fans with mousy hair and good skin seemed to be forcing themselves to believe that they were enjoying it. Then we got lost getting out and took about a month getting home. It was fucking wacky, man. I’ll probably do it again next year.